Aggies Suffer Another Blowout Loss Against Air Force
The Air Force Falcons were flying high all night long Thursday, and there didn’t seem to be much Utah State could do about it.
AFA scored touchdowns on five of their seven drives, utilizing their esteemed option offense to rack up 320 rushing yards to roll to a 35-7 win over an overwhelmed Aggie football team on a freezing December night in Logan.
USU’s offense – which was without starting running back Devontae Henry-Cole and receiver Savon Scarver due to COVID issues – was affected by self-inflicting wounds all night long and failed to sustain drives, resulting in just seven points – tied for their lowest point total of the season.
“The effort was really good by our guys, but the execution wasn’t as good.” said head coach Frank Maile. “With these guys man they eat up the clock and that’s what they do for a living and so it just wasn’t good enough tonight. As the game went on – the offense kind of lost their mojo a little bit as far as trying to be on the field and controlling the clock. Defensively we had opportunities to get off the football field but we couldn’t do it and we left them on the field longer than we wanted to.
The Aggie defense looked committed to stopping the option offense, and appeared like they had a shot at early on- but the big plays killed them. A first-quarter, 23-yard touchdown run by sophomore running back Brad Roberts – who finished with 98 yards on the ground. A second-quarter, 49-yard touchdown pass from sophomore QB Haaziq Daniels to senior receiver Ben Peterson. And another second-quarter touchdown from Daniels, this time a 37-yard touchdown run.
“It’s Air Force so you gotta be disciplined,” said senior linebacker Nick Heninger. You can’t win games if you’re 90 or 95 percent disciplined because if you give up a big play they score, they capitalize and they had three of those in the first half.”
An added element to an already effective rushing attack was Air Force’s passing game Daniels finished with a season-high 127 yards passing on just nine attempts. This kept the Aggie defense unbalanced and unsure what to expect all night long.
“It wasn’t what Air Force usually does,” said Heninger. “We still prepared for any and all situations, but that was for sure an unorthodox game plan for them to pass as much as you did. When you see early success with something, you don’t stop. So they just kept going back to it.”
Offensively things started well for the Aggies. The opening drive was a 15-play 65-yard drive that shaved 8:04 of the clock. Freshman Elelyon Noa was running the ball effectively, and junior quarterback Andrew Peasley – who finished 17/32 on his completions, good for 123 passing yards – was hitting open receivers. The Aggies went 5/5 on third downs, the fifth being a four-yard touchdown pass from Peasley to senior wide receiver Jordan Nathan with 6:56 to go in the quarter.
“I was really impressed,” Maile said about the opening drive. “The touchdown was big time.”
But self-inflicting wounds would hurt the young Aggie offense. Two personal fouls in the first half, an illegal motion penalty, several missed passes, and an interception that negated a potential field goal attempt to end the half – just to name a few mistakes continually got in the Aggies way.
“It was a lot of mental things that we were doing wrong,” said senior receiver Jordan Nathan. “We were dropping balls, trading penalties, and you can’t do that against a team like Air Force.
A pivotal play – if there was such a thing in this game – came with 12:37 left in the third quarter. After the Aggie D had forced Air Force to punt the ball for the first time, USU got the ball back down 21-7 and were putting together a favorable drive. Facing fourth and four from the 29 yard-line, they went for it, but the play blew up, resulted in a turnover on downs.
11 played and 71 yards later, AFA was in the endzone, terminating any aspirations for an Aggie comeback and extending their lead to 28-7 with 4:43 left in the third quarter. After that drive, the USU offense did little, ending drives with a punt, an interception, and a turnover on downs. The Aggies finished the game with a humble 123 passing yards and 109 rushing yards.
“It was a lack of execution,” said Maile about the offense struggles. “Everybody plays a part in that offensively, and so the bottom line is we didn’t execute the way we needed to, and we gave those guys opportunities to get back on the football field, and we played the price for it.”
After yet another blowout loss on this forgettable 2020 season, the 1-5 Aggies now focus on their final game of the season next Saturday at Colorado State.
“We need to get better as a unit and finish out the season strong,” said Nathan. “We need to come to practice prepared, in order to do the right things to win. We are a tough unit, but we are a young unit, so you know when everything going bad you see finger-pointing you see heads down and you can’t have that.”